Production flow · The flow measure · Element

The lead time

Elapsed time from release to completion, with its spread.

The part

What it is

This is what the customer experiences and what a promise is made against, so its variability matters as much as its average.

The upper percentile is the honest basis for a delivery promise, and it is rarely the number used.

The smallest level

The attributes it carries

Each attribute is one of the framework’s shared types. What a date is, and how it is written, is defined once for the whole model — the note here says what it means in this particular place.